Deaths in the workplace rise

Provisional figures released by the HSE show that 144 workers died as result of work related injuries between April 2017 and March 2018 (a rate of 0.45 per 100,000 workers) an increase from the 135 workers fatally injured the previous year.

Despite this increase the figure has remained broadly level over the last five years and is lower than the number of fatal injuries in 2015/16 (147) and 2012/13 (150).

As with recent years the over 60’s were particularly at risk making up 40% of those fatally injured in 2017/18 even though such workers made up only around 10% of the workforce.

Falls from height were the most common cause of death and together with being struck by moving vehicles or moving objects these accounted for almost 60% of all fatal injuries.

When compared to the numbers of people working in an industry agriculture (29 deaths) and the waste and recycling sectors (12 deaths) were the industries with the highest rate of fatal injury with rates approximately 18 times and 16 times as high as the average across all industries respectively.

Construction (38 deaths) also saw a significant number of deaths although when compared to the number of workers this was only 4 times the rate across all industries.

Finally 100 members of the public were also fatally injured in accidents connected to work in 2017/18, just over half of these occurred on railways.

The full HSE report can be found at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf